The 2017 meeting of the American Academy of Optometry was held at the McCormick Place Convention Centre in Chicago, Illinois. This year marked the 96th annual meeting of the Academy, with the highlight of the “Today’s Research, Tomorrow’s Practice” plenary session being “The Eye As a Mirror to the Brain”, with presentations in the session by Dr Robert Sergott of the Wills Eye Hospital, Dr Christopher Hudson from the University of Waterloo and Dr Marina Bedny from Johns Hopkins University.

The School was well represented at the meeting, with staff and students from the School, the Centre for Eye Health (CfEH) and the Brien Holden Vision Institute (BHVI) all attending and participating in the conference. In total, nine posters were presented by members of staff and students from the School, CfEH and BHVI throughout the course of the meeting, on topics ranging from sensitivity of astigmats to variations in cylinder corrections, aberration profiles of Asian and Caucasian myopic eyes, imaging effects in macular disease diagnosis, order effects of left and right eye-hand coordination tests and complementary and alternative medicine in Australian optometric practice. Centre for Eye Health Director Professor Michael Kalloniatis was selected to present in the AAO press conference as well as in the hot topics in Glaucoma session. Daniel Tilia moderated and presented in a paper session on contact lenses. Professor Mark Willcox, Dr Isabelle Jalbert and Elizabeth Wong also all presented their latest research on antibacterial contact lenses, eye care practitioner’s perspectives on Age Related Macular Degeneration and the use of OCT in differential diagnosis of elevated optic discs in paper sessions. Finally, Jack Phu was also invited to present on his graduate research at the Optometric Glaucoma Society meeting as the immediate past OGS Ezell Fellow.